ITALIANS IN AUSTRALIA.

Evening Star, Issue 20060, 28 December 1928, Page 6

ITALIANS IN AUSTRALIA.

Since Fascism has become Italy’s political religion challenges have been broadcasted indiscriminately. Italian Chauvinism is really one of the menaces to world peace. Now it is Austria, now Jugo-Slavia, and now Franco against whom defiance is breathed by the Fascist-controlled Press of Italy, or to whom cryptic warnings are conveyed by Benito Mussolini in some patriotic speech. It is only a few months since a British official courier was the victim ■ of an unprovoked and outrageous assault by a band of Fascists in an Italian town, but for some undisclosed reason the affair was belittled and hushed up by the British authorities. Now fresh expressions of Anglo-phobia are being vented by a Milan newspaper. There is talk of “ Anglo-Saxon hypocrisy, brutal insults, and open violation ox those principles of enlightened liberalism and intelligent democracy of which English society is so proud.” This is an aftermath of the waterside workers’ strike in Australia. The shipowners asked for volunteer labour,.and Italians were prominent among those who kept shipping from being held up. The displaced unionists, deprived of preference, have sought at some ports to intimidate their substitutes, and this has led to clashes in which racial animosity has had quite as much stress given it as the feud between antagonistic sections of workers. It now appears that the port authorities at Adelaide are debarring from employment on the wharves those workers who are unable to speak English. On grounds of safety to life and limb alone this provision should not be regarded as arbitrary or unreasonable. A vessel working cargo at several hatches would be a more prolific'source of accidents if orders and instructions had to be given in several ’ languages' befo 3 all engaged understood what was meant. There is the precedent of the Tower of Babel, which the workers abandoned in disgust because of the confusion of tongues, and one may be sure that the casualty list had assumed fair proportions before dispersal was decided upon. The * Popolo d’ltalia ’ admits that the Port Adelaide authorities’ decision may seem to he dictated by practical considerations, but declares that it is really an anti-alien immigration device in diinuiso.

But there is no need for disguise. Whether it is now the, law of the land in the Commonwealth we know not, but before the war Australia used to insist on a language test, before admitting aliens of any colour. Nor docs it greatly avail the Milan paper to boast that Italian workmen were the first in Australia, Africa, and America to “ open up unknown lands and lay down the fertile germs of Mediterranean civilisation.” Italian histories may-dif-fer from our own in respect'of the discovery and colonisation of Australia. It is, however, interesting to note that Captain Lyng, who is a joint contributor to a book just issued from the Melbourne University Press, entitled ‘ The Peopling of Australia,’ declares that “tho general deficiency in discipline” in Australia is traceable to the influence of tho 13 per cent, of people of Mediterranean stock comprised in the ■copulation of tho Commonwealth.